Relax at a luxe rural retreat
San Francisco real estate developer Rafael Galiano still remembers the day clearly. He was lying in bed with a sprained ankle, surfing the Internet, when he happened upon what could only be described as “the most gnarly flyer ever” for a piece of property.
He could barely make out the photo of the house listed in Winters. But it was enough to make him sit up and take notice.
“We had never heard of Winters. We were there in two days,” Galiano says about himself and his partner, John Martin, who also worked in real estate. “We saw it — and we just knew. The house has a storybook feeling, an enchanting feeling.”
For them, it was love at first sight for the 1865 white Victorian mansion that was built by one of the first American settlers in Yolo County. Over the years, it had always been a private residence. But in 2011, Galiano, now 47, and Martin 38, the fifth owners of the property, set about to transform it into an intimate boutique hotel, dubbing it the Inn at Park Winters in a nod to Winter Park, a town that Galiano grew fond of when growing up in Florida.
They redid the plumbing and electrical, and added a private bathroom to each of the five bedrooms. Friends and colleagues gifted them a piano, crystal chandeliers, ornate wood-framed mirrors and other antiques for the interior.
They added modern touches such as a fire pit fashioned from an I-beam from an old steel bridge, an expansive barn with a professional kitchen for events, and a saltwater pool and hot tub fronted by a soaring 15-foot art-piece door that swings open with a push of a button.
The son of Cuban tobacco farmers, Galiano has tended gardens since he was a child. He installed a sunken circular garden rimmed with gingko trees, as well as a culinary herb garden on the 10-acre property, already lush with almond, fig, walnut, pear, orange, plum and pomegranate trees.
From the moment Galiano and Martin opened the doors, the inn has been a hit, thanks largely to their ingenuity.
Due a twist of fate, the couple already had experience in running a hotel. In 2008, they were living in North of the Panhandle in San Francisco, in a Victorian they had redone so exquisitely that it was featured prominently in design magazines, when the stock market suffered its biggest single-day crash. People stopped buying property, and Galiano and Martin feared for their future. So they moved into their basement and proceeded to turn the rest of their house into a successful vacation rental and wedding venue. When the economy bounced back, a Facebook engineer bought the house, giving Galiano and Martin enough money to buy Park Winters.
Nowadays, it’s the tech world that seeks out this bucolic inn surrounded by alfalfa fields. LinkedIn held a corporate event here with 25 members “glamping” in tents set up in the field. Genentech has held three retreats. Facebook employees have had weddings here. In fact, dozens of weddings are held annually, so many that Galiano and Martin plan on adding a separate honeymoon suite, as well as three luxury guest houses.
“This is like raw California,” Galiano says. “It really touches people. They can come here and just unplug, which is a luxury these days.”
There are guests who come back regularly, too. Maureen Pon, 56, who lives just 20 minutes away in Davis, is one of them. Park Winters has been the setting for touchstones in her life, both large and small, both jubilant and somber. It was the site of her eldest daughter’s wedding, that same daughter’s baby shower a year and a half later, and the celebration of life ceremony for Pon’s husband, who died this year from cancer.
“It’s our go-to place and our home away from home,” Pon says. “That’s how they make you feel there.” The Inn at Park Winters, 27850 County Road 26, Winters, (530) 669-3692. www.parkwinters.com. Rooms from $275.